Topology Proceedings Web: http://topology.auburn.edu/tp/ Mail: Topology Proceedings Department of Mathematics & Statistics Auburn University, Alabama 36849, USA E-mail:
[email protected] ISSN: 0146-4124 COPYRIGHT °c by Topology Proceedings. All rights reserved. TOPOLOGY PROCEEDINGS Volume 28, No. 1, 2004 Pages 1-18 A WEAK ALGEBRAIC STRUCTURE ON TOPOLOGICAL SPACES AND CARDINAL INVARIANTS A. V. ARHANGEL’ SKII Abstract. The notion of !-diagonalizability, introduced in [6], is applied in this paper to the theory of cardinal invariants of topological spaces. A basic lemma stablishes a connection between !-diagonalizability, the ¼-character, and the count- ability of the pseudocharacter in a Hausdorff space. This lemma permits one to prove that every !-diagonalizable lo- cally compact Hausdorff space of countable tightness is first countable, which answers a question asked in [4]. Applications to the study of power-homogeneous compacta of countable tightness are given. In particular, we show that every power- homogeneous locally compact monotonically normal space is first countable. This theorem implies a result of M. Bell in [8]. 1. Introduction Given an algebraic structure (a group structure, a ring structure, a vector space structure, and so on), a standard problem to con- sider is what kind of topologies can be introduced on this structure so that they fit it nicely (make the operations continuous, for ex- ample). It is much more rare that the inverse approach is adopted: given a topological space X, find out if it is possible to introduce 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 54A25, 54D50; Secondary 54C35. Key words and phrases. character, ¼-character, point-countable type, power-homogeneous space, sequential space, ¿-diagonalizable space, ¿-twister, tightness.